Five shots and a fistfight
by Book girl fan
Summary: Inspired by 221b hound's brilliant story 'Five soliloquies and a dialogue' over on AO3. Reading that is not necessary to understand this, but I'd recommend it anyway!
1. Chapter 1

John pulled his clothes out of his cupboard, stuffing them into his suitcase, trying to keep his gaze from wandering over them and reliving memories. He'd done enough of that this week.

The thought stopped them in his tracks. This week. It had been a week since Sherlock died, jumping off the roof of St Barts, long black coat fanning out behind him like he would fly with it - except he didn't. He fell, off the roof and onto the road, and now he was dead.

John stiffened unconsciously, fighting back the memories and concentrating very deliberately on his task. Clothes out of the drawers and into his bag, pull them out, stuff them in, pull them out, stuff them in... His hand brushed against something hard and heavy. Just from the feel, John already knew what it would be, and drawing it out only proved it. His gun, tucked away in his underwear drawer, safe from 'drugs busts' and, supposedly, Sherlock, but that was never true, he was far too clever for that.

John sat on the bed, turning the gun over in his hands, heart tugging painfully at the memories. So many memories, good and bad, but mostly good, had been tied to this flat. Now Sherlock was dead, and took all of that with him. Sherlock was dead. Finally, John let the thought sink in. Dead, and would never again live in Baker Street. Dead, and wouldn't come swanning up the stairs, declaring "We have a case, John! Finally something not boring!" Dead, dead, "dead, dead!"

Barely noticing what he was doing, he stood up from the bed, shooting at the wall. "Dead!" _Bang_! "Dead!" _Bang_! "Dead!" _Bang_!"Dead!" _Bang_!"Dead!" _Bang_!"Dead!" _Bang_!

The gun clicked, bullets spent. John stood there a moment longer, breathing heavily, eyes still fixed on the wall, now adorned with bullet holes. Sherlock Holmes was dead, and nothing was ever going to bring him back.


	2. Chapter 2

"He was a good man, in the end," Greg said, wiping his mouth after the second round of shots. "A right git sometimes, but a good man."

John just grunted, staring morosely into his glass. It had been two months since Sherlock died, and it still hurt to think of him, though the pain was less fresh now and more of a dull ache, like the bullet wound in his shoulder; a constant, painful reminder that he'd have to learn to live with.

"Y'know, the very first case he helped me with, he was high as a kite and still solved it in minutes," Greg continued, drawing John out of his dark thoughts. "Told me the gardener had done it, 'just look at her shoes, inspector!' Drove me mad, but he was right." His smile faded. "Right about everything."

John nodded sharply, signalling for another round. Although he was trying to enjoy tonight, his grief was still too strong to listen to stories about Sherlock without more drinks than they'd had so far.

The shots arrived and they gulped them down, eyes stinging from the strong sensation. Lestrade clapped John's arm. "Been a while since we've done this."

"Not since last Christmas, right?"

"Yeah. No offence, mate, but that was an awful party."

John snorted grimly. "Rest of the night wasn't much better." Irene Adler's death, and the effect it had had on Sherlock, wasn't something he liked to think on. John frowned as the thought connected somewhere, a hazy connection coming together in the back of his mind. Then a rousing cheer went up from another part of the pub, and the thought was lost.


	3. Chapter 3

Mycroft looked up from his desk as John stormed into his office, gun in his pocket and very clearly angry. "You knew, you knew all this time! Don't even bother denying it, you had to have known, of course you did!"

Mycroft sat primly behind his desk, silently cursing that he had left his umbrella, and all it contained, by the door, so far from his desk. "I assure you, Dr Watson, as unusual as it may seem, I have no idea what you are talking about."

John laughed bitterly. "I'm not actually an idiot, you know. It may seem like it to you two, with your whole 'cleverer than the world' shtick, but I figured it out. I don't know how he did it, but I know he did. He faked his death, and he didn't tell me. Neither of you told me that my best friend is alive!"

Mycroft stood up behind his desk, polite mask faltering to reveal icy rage. "That joke is in very poor taste, Dr Watson. I had thought better of you. Get out of my office immediately, or I will have you escorted out."

"Still trying to deny it, huh Mycroft?" John strode up to the desk, and in one smooth movement pulled out his gun and shot directly over Mycroft's head, before angling it to face Mycroft himself. "Too late. I know now, you can stop pretending. He faked his death, and you were in on it. So where is he now? Tell me!"

"My brother is dead!" Mycroft shouted, voice cracking with grief. Ignoring the gun aimed at his head, he slumped back down to his chair, closing his eyes against tears that threatened to spill. "Sherlock is dead, Dr Watson. There was no great escape, no scheme, nothing. Just Sherlock's jump."

When he looked up, John was staring at him with dawning comprehension. "You didn't know," he whispered. "You really didn't know." He pocketed the gun and leant over the desk, compassion in his eyes. "Mycroft. Sherlock's alive."


	4. Chapter 4

John flattened himself against the wall, the sound of gunshots abruptly reminding him of his first meeting with Mycroft. _With Sherlock Holmes, you see the battlefield._ Well, he was sure seeing it now.

He spun and returned fire, killing one man and wounding the other. The sound of a car starting shortly afterwards told him that the other man had escaped. Probably better that way, really, John reflected. Word might get back to Sherlock that he wasn't the only one taking out the network. That is, if he was actually alive.

Even after everything he'd done, a part of John couldn't believe that Sherlock had survived his fall off St Barts. It had been nearly six months, six months of pain, anger, and not a shred of communication from Sherlock, and though John was convinced that Sherlock was still alive, and had managed to persuade Mycroft as well, the lack of concrete proof was depressing. Surely Sherlock would have done something by now?

John shook his head, clearing his thoughts. No matter how many time he had this argument, with himself or with Mycroft, it made no difference. Sherlock hadn't done anything, and they had no proof. For now, it didn't matter. If Sherlock was alive, they were cutting down on his enemies. If he was dead - in that case, what better revenge than destroying the network of the man who had destroyed his friend?

The sound of police sirens spurred John into action, leaving the dark alley behind in favour of the roof. Being found with a dead body and illegal gun would not help him on this mission, and though Mycroft would get him out of trouble, it was faster to just not get caught in it at all. John reached the roof and climbed off the ladder, peering over the edge at the police who had just arrived. He heard a few snatches of conversation below, but nothing in English, and probably nothing that would be of much use even if he could understand it.

He gave up on the attempt and slipped into the shadows of the rooftop, the dark night hiding his tracks. There was nothing more he could do here, and he had a long way yet to go.


	5. Chapter 5

A shot rang out.

John flinched involuntarily, expecting at any moment to feel the searing pain of a bullet tearing through his flesh, but nothing happened. For a moment he was surprised - he'd thought the men they were hunting would have had better aim than that - when a soft gasp of air from behind caught his attention, turning his relief into a growing sense of dread.

He turned around, and his fears were realised. His keen doctor's eyes immediately snapped to the way Mycroft was limping slightly, keeping his weight off one leg. Even more notable was how he had gone suddenly quiet, with not a sound of complaint since that one quiet gasp, and no look of bored superiority but just a stiff jaw indicating pain.

John mentally logged all of these signs even as he ran back to Mycroft's side, making sure to stay hidden in the shadows of the alley. It would do no good for him to be shot as well.

Another gunshot let him know their target had seen the movement, but John couldn't afford to be distracted right now. Mycroft needed help, and fast. Their backup was still ten minutes out, and that wouldn't be enough unless he could slow the bleeding. Crouching down, he tore a piece off the end of his shirt and wrapped it around Mycroft's leg, tying it tightly in place. "Hold it there,' he hissed. At Mycroft's nod, he moved back slightly, trying to get a better angle on the shooter.

A brief flash of moonlight showed him a dark figure at the top of the alley before clouds obscured the light again, but that flash was all he needed. He aimed towards where the figure had been, the figure that had shot Mycroft, and pulled the trigger. John didn't even wait to hear the thud of the body hitting ground before he was hurrying back to Mycroft's side.

He sunk to his knees beside Mycroft, who was leaning heavily against the wall, blinking slowly. His hands had drifted from the ragged cloth tied around his leg, and now were only loosely clasped in place, blood still welling from the wound. John cursed silently. If their backup didn't come soon, Sherlock wouldn't have a brother to come home to. _If he came home at all,_ a small voice whispered, which John promptly ignored.

He grabbed the cloth from Mycroft's lax fingers, pulling it tightly back into place. "No, you do not get to do this to me!" he snarled, hands clenching tightly around Mycroft's leg. "I couldn't save your brother, I'm not losing you too!"

"I confess, I," Mycroft drew a deep shuddering breath, face pale, "didn't plan to die tonight either, Dr Watson."

"And you're not going to," John growled. "Not when we're finally getting somewhere. You are going to be fine, and then I'm going to yell at you for being an idiot and going out in the field!" John took his eyes from Mycroft for a second, scanning the sky for a helicopter, but when his gaze returned Mycroft had slumped against the wall, eyes closed, breathing shallow.

He slapped Mycroft's cheek. "No, stay awake. No passing out on me."

"I'm still awake yet, doctor." Mycroft's eyelids flickered, eyes staying open only through what appeared to be great effort. "Blood loss should not be significant enough for me to pass out for another two minutes."

"Then you can keep your eyes open until then," John said firmly.

He took Mycroft's silence as agreement, but still carefully watched him, tapping his cheek every time his eyes slipped closed, which happened more and more as the seconds dragged past. Just as John could hear helicopter rotors overhead, Mycroft's eyes closed again, and this time John couldn't wake him.

The helicopter landed, men in black pouring out in a flood, sweeping up the two of them and bringing them back into the helicopter, the whole operation taking no more than a minute. John passed on what information he had then stood back as the medics got to work, absently rubbing at his bloody hands.

"Are you injured?"

He started, gaze torn from the medics towards the young man who had just addressed him. "The blood? No, it's not mine, I'm fine."

The man nodded. "Then I'm checking you over."

"I said I was fine."

Ignoring John's best Army Captain glare, he continued, "It's policy, courtesy of Mr Holmes' assistant. Anyone who claims to be fine is to be immediately checked out, and forced to eat, rest, or receive medical treatment as necessary."

"No, I really am fine," John tried to convince him, but the man was having none of it.

"Then this should just take a moment, sir."

Realising resistance would be futile, John submitted to the examination, keeping one eye on Mycroft the whole time. The man was right, and it did take just a moment, the medic declaring him cleared only seconds before the helicopter started to descend in preparation for landing. As they landed, staff rushed out to wheel Mycroft into the building, leaving John standing on the platform, the adrenaline high of the past few hours fading into the grey tones of exhaustion.

"Dr Watson?" The young man from before taps his shoulder, prompting John to look up and properly see the man for the first time, without the chaos of the helicopter. For a moment, he's filled with wild hope, that this man has been Sherlock the whole time, miraculously returned and in disguise as a medic. He rather thinks he'd faint if it was. But no, this man is much too stocky, and his curls are brown, not the rich black of Sherlock's.

"Dr Watson?"

John abruptly realised he'd been ignoring the man, who was now looking at him rather concernedly. "Yes, what is it?"

"I'll take you to the waiting room inside, doctor. You can wait there on news of Mr Holmes."

It's not a suggestion, and John doesn't take it as one, just nods and follows the man.

"My name's Oscar," the young man volunteers, glancing at John furtively. "Oscar Andrews."

John doesn't know what to say, so he stays silent. They don't talk after that.

The next words to be spoken, rousing John from fitful sleep, are "Mr Holmes survived the surgery, and will recover fully." That's all he needs to drop off again, secure in the knowledge that he has not gotten another Holmes killed.


	6. Chapter 6

**Thank you for all the lovely reviews! I've really appreciated them. Now, on with the final part!**

"So where exactly is this Moran?" John asked, hurrying to keep up with Sherlock's rapid pace. That was one thing that hadn't changed over the last eighteen months.

"Montague Street, he's been there the whole time," Sherlock told him, fingers flying across the small screen of his phone .

John stumbled a moment in sheer incredulity. "The one opposite Baker Street?"

"Yes, John, do-" he cut himself off, looking nervously back at John. Maybe things had changed after all. He turned his gaze back to his phone, but continue to sneak small glances at John, almost as if he was unsure what John might do. "Yes, the Montague Street opposite Baker Street," he repeated, scathing tone replaced with something more contrite.

"What about Mrs Hudson, is she safe?" John asked, overlooking Sherlock's uncharacteristic pause.

"Yes, she's fine," Sherlock replied absently, phone now put away in favour of scanning the rooftops. "She's looking after something for me, I dropped it off earlier."

John stopped in the street, holding onto Sherlock's arm to pull him to a halt as well. "Are you telling me this whole time, Mrs Hudson knew?"

Sherlock frowned. "What? No, of course not. No one knew, no one but Molly."

John paused for a moment to digest that information, then continued on. "So you just showed up at her door saying "Hi Mrs Hudson, I'm back from the dead, do you have any tea'? You could have given her a heart attack!"

"Well obviously I didn't, and why would I have asked for tea?" Sherlock tugged his arm out of John's grip and started off again. "Never mind, irrelevant. John, we need to go!"

John ran off after him, rolling his eyes at the obliviousness of his best friend even as he secretly rejoiced at having him there to be oblivious at all. Their walk turned to a run, until they were going fast enough that neither could spare the breath to talk.

Sherlock came to a halt, John only just noticing in time to stop himself from crashing nose first into Sherlock's coat. Sherlock tossed him a withering glance, but made no comment on it. "Moran's been renting this flat, under a false name of course, since I died, probably using it to keep an eye on you, see if I really was dead." John winced at Sherlock's cavalier tone, but Sherlock paid him no mind. "Naturally, once we started taking down Moriarty's web he would have known I was alive, but he knew I would return here to finish the job."

"That was the plan, then?" John interjected, voice full of carefully concealed optimism. "That you would come back here?"

Sherlock looked at him in bemusement. "Of course, where else would I go?"

"Well, you could have stayed with Mycroft." The look of absolute horror on Sherlock's face was enough to break John's deadpan expression and send him into a hastily muffled fit of laughter.

The sound of a pebble scattering across the ground sent his mirth fleeing. John looked to Sherlock, and Sherlock confirmed; Moran was here. John sunk back further into the shadows of the wall, calling on all the skills he had acquired over the last year and a half to aid him. Beside him, Sherlock did the same, his dark coat and curls rendering him near invisible.

A shadow stretched across the wall, drawing shorter and shorter as Moran drew closer. For one heartstopping moment, Moran paused at the base of the staircase, eyes searching, nose lifted like a bloodhound. John held his breath, willing his muscles to remain still - and then he was gone, up the stairs and out of sight.

"Breathe, John," Sherlock whispered. John let out his breath in one great whoosh, the sound oddly loud in the absence of the tension that had preceded it. "Listen to me: Moran is just at the top of those stairs, preparing to shoot me."

John felt a shiver of panic race up his spine. "I thought he didn't know we were here!" he hissed, barely remembering to keep his voice low.

"Pay attention, John!" Sherlock whispered back. "It won't take him long to realise I'm not actually there, so we'll need to move quickly. Remember, he's a very dangerous man."

John gripped the reassuringly solid butt of his gun. "Yeah, well, so am I."

Sherlock grinned at him, the familiar manic smile that came from a case nearly over. Almost without though, John's face formed a matching smile, dark and dangerous where Sherlock's was brilliant and blinding, but each equally set on this one goal. After tonight, Moran would never again be a free man.

They crept up the stairs, listening to the soft sounds of movement from above. When they reached the top, they split, one to each side of the door. Sherlock looked to John; John nodded. They slammed through the door, John with his gun out and ready to fire, only to stop short at the utter emptiness of it, nothing there but a half assembled rifle on the floor. There wasn't a chance to ask what had happened before the gun was knocked out of John's hand.

"The great Sherlock Holmes," Moran laughed scornfully, pointing his own gun at the two. "Fooled by someone hiding behind the door. I expected better of you, Holmes, and you too, Watson. Hardly worth the hunt-"

Moran shifted the gun, and John took his chance, punching him right in the nose and sending the other man reeling backwards.

Moran wiped the blood from his nose, sneering at John, and returned with a right hook, hitting him square in the eye. A flurry of blows followed from both sides, John hardly noticing when he was joined by many more. What seemed like half Scotland Yard had shown up, and were happily laying into Moran, who was now barely standing upright, though the bruises developing on many of the crowd showed that he had made his mark.

The sound of sirens brought John out of his battle haze, and part of him wondered how he hadn't heard them before. Surely there must have been sirens when the Yard showed up?

"I had Lestrade and a group of his officers wait around the corner for my signal," Sherlock said, curls only slightly mussed from the fight. John wiped blood from his lip, all too aware of the dirt on his clothes and bruises on his face. Sherlock saw the motion and huffed. "The ambulance is here, so get someone to look at that. If you're lucky, you can charge Moran with assault."

Laughing at the idea, John left Sherlock examining the air gun and complied, being joined by Greg only a few moments later.

"Come full circle, hasn't it, mate?" Greg grinned, crouching down beside John as the medic iced John's rapidly darkening eye.

John shrugged off the shock blanket the medic had insisted on, ignoring the reproving look, then turned to Greg. "Full circle? How?"

"With the cabbie. His Majesty over there," Greg jerked a thumb at the pacing Sherlock, "in the back of an ambulance with a shock blanket, and now you here with another one. In fact," he lifted up the blanket John had discarded, taking a closer look, "might even be the same one. All we're missing is a mysterious shooter." He gave John a significant look.

"Probably could have come in handy," John agreed cheerfully. Greg rolled his eyes in mock exaggeration, but left it alone, moving off towards one of the other officers who had been injured in the fight.

John left the shock blanket behind as he walked over to Sherlock, the medic who had attended him now having moved on to someone else. "There was a Ron Adair we tracked down once, had some connection to Moriarty though we could never figure out what it was," John said. He gestured to their surrounds. "He died just like this, empty room, no signs of entry, and no sound of a gunshot."

"Moran's work. He loves kills like this, where no one can trace it back to him. Who would expect an antique air gun to be the murder weapon?" Sherlock sniffed haughtily. "Mycroft must have been positively ill not to figure that one out."

John glared at him. "It was the one year anniversary of your death, you pillock. He was grieving!"

Sherlock scowled, looking slightly abashed. "I wasn't to know that, was I?"

John looked at Sherlock, willing his expression to convey his utter disbelief at both the Holmes brothers and their utter ineptitude at understanding emotions, and how John himself was unsure how he had survived dealing with them for so long.

Sherlock looked down. Message received, then. John decided to take pity on him, bumping Sherlock's shoulder companionably. "Let's go home."

It wasn't until the next day that he realised Sherlock's smile was because, even after all these months, he still called Baker Street home.


End file.
